Posts Tagged ‘Terry Zwigoff’

Rebecca: You actually like that guy?
Enid: I don’t know, I kind of like him. He’s the exact opposite of everything I really hate. In a way, he’s such a clueless dork, he’s almost kind of cool.
Rebecca: That guy is many things, but he’s definitely not cool.

Enid: I think only stupid people have good relationships.
Seymour: That’s the spirit.

Enid: God, look at this poster! I can’t believe this room! You’re the luckiest guy in the world! I’d kill to have stuff like this!
Seymour: Please… go ahead and kill me. This stuff doesn’t make you happy, believe me.

Enid: Oh, come on! What are you talking about?
Seymour: You think it’s healthy to obsessively collect things? You can’t connect with other people so you fill your life with stuff. I’m just like all the rest of these pathetic collector losers.
Enid: No, you’re not! You’re a cool guy, Seymour.

Seymour: What are we, in slow motion here?! What are ya, hypnotized? Have some more kids, why don’t you? For Christ’s sake, would you move!?
Enid: Jesus, Seymour!

Seymour: It’s simple for everybody else — give ’em a Big Mac and a pair of Nikes and they’re happy! I just can’t relate to 99.9% of humanity.
Enid: Yeah, well, I can’t relate to humanity either, but I don’t think it’s totally hopeless.
Seymour: But it’s not totally hopeless for you… I’ve had it. I don’t even have the energy to try anymore. You should make sure you do the exact opposite of everything I do so you don’t end up like me.

Enid: How come all that time I was trying to get you a date you never asked me out?
Seymour: You’re a beautiful girl, I couldn’t imagine you’d have any interest in me except as an amusingly cranky eccentric curiosity.

Seymour: Well, I have to admit that things are really starting to look up for me since my life turned to shit.

All the screencaps for Ghost World Half-Day will come from a combination of sources: heartstopper, augustusgloop, and vodiak on the LJ; Movie Screenshots on the blogger; various imdb caps and old, unsourced still shots. Also I might scan some pictures from the graphic novel since I am right now looking at the spine of it in a pile of books on my desk.

Seymour: So, was that your boyfriend?
Enid: Josh? No, no — he’s nobody’s boyfriend, he’s just this guy that Becky and I like to torture.

Enid: Josh.
Rebecca: Josh.
Enid, Rebecca: Josh!
Enid: God, I’ll bet he’s in there jerking off.
Rebecca: I’ll bet he never jerks off.
Enid: Yeah, he’s beyond human, and stuff like that.
Rebecca: Should we leave him a note?
Enid: Sure. You got a pen?
[Rebecca pulls out a pen, Enid takes it]
Enid: [writing] Dear Josh, we came by to fuck you, but you were not home. Therefore you are gay. Signed, Tiffany and Amber.

Enid: I think one of us should fuck Josh.
Rebecca: Go ahead.
Enid: No, really.
Rebecca: God, you’re really obsessed.
Enid: No, I’m not. I just think it’d be funny. To see what he’d do.

Rebecca: I thought we decided that Josh was way too cool to be interested in sex, and that he’s the only decent person left in the world? and we would never want to bring him down to our level and all that.
Enid: Yeah, but maybe one of us should at least try.
Rebecca: No matter what happened it would be a big disaster. Let’s just try and keep everything the way it is.

Enid: Actually, I’ve got a total crush on this one guy right now, but it’s a really fucked-up situation…
Seymour: Oh yeah?
Enid: Oh wait, you met him… remember that guy Josh? I’m like practically obsessed with him, but I can’t do anything about it because Becky would freak out.
Seymour: Why?
Enid: Never mind … it’s way too complicated.

Of course, she is being angsty and late-teeny and melodramatic. Even when it’s terrifying and big and exciting, it is still not at all complicated. If you like someone — tell them. No friends imposing screwy rules on you and wanting things to stay the same forever ought slow you down. We make things so intricate and barricaded away and crippling in our lives, we construct entire fantasy worlds of why it is best not to talk or act on our feelings, mainly because of being afraid of those feelings and of being hurt or rejected. (Oh, just replace all those “we’s” with “I.” I’m embarassed by this self-audit so I brought everyone else in to the picture so’s as not to feel so dorky and alone. Super-sorry.)

RIP, Brad Renfro.

Here’s a little wisdom-bomb I used to drop on my buddies if we were out on the town and they were psyching themselves out of talking to a young woman who’d caught their interest. PSA: The best way to make sure that you will positively strike out with a person and never, never, ever have sexytimes and maybe spend your life with them is to NOT ASK. So roll the dice. I know it’s easier said then done, but we have to try or die alone.

All the screencaps for Ghost World Half-Day will come from a combination of sources: heartstopper, augustusgloop, and vodiak on the LJ; Movie Screenshots on the blogger; various imdb caps and old, unsourced still shots. Also I might scan some pictures from the graphic novel since I am right now looking at the spine of it in a pile of books on my desk.

There are a lot of eye-popping colors in Ghost World, but the three most consistent elements of what I think of as the Enid Palette are vivid primaries: red, blue, and green.

A very specific and bilious shade of green emerges early in Enid’s wardrobe. This poisonous-snake shade appears in her clothing, which complements the strong primaries in which Enid usually dresses, as well as her black bob and dark glasses with her fair skin and blue eyes.

In the above shot, both girls wear green, but the colors and their function are totally different. Rebecca’s simple, anonymous knit shirt is kind of leaf-green and yellow, characteristic of the dusky rose, natural understatement in the palette associated with her character — in contrast, Enid’s plaid schoolgirl skirt is deliberately shockingly green, an unflattering color in a style that is a send-up of conformity.

As a symbolic or character-establishing color, it’s pretty elementary to suppose that Enid favors this green because she, herself, has some wide streaks of biliousness and poisonous-snaky snark.

Enid: Hello there, young employee of the Sidewinder.
Josh: I already told you I’m not going to give you a ride.
Enid: What can you tell me, young man, about the various flavors of “frozen yogurt”?
Josh: Look, I’ll be done in a minute. Just wait outside.
Boss: JOSH! WHAT ARE YOU DOING!?
Josh: (sighs) The flavors we’re featuring this week, in addition to old favorites chocolate and vanilla, are Six-Gun Strawberry, Wild Cherry Round-up, and Ten Gallon Tangerine.
Enid: Hmm. I don’t believe I care for any of those.

Over the course of the film, as Enid begins more deeply probing who she “is” and what that will mean for the rest of her life, the green starts to migrate. It appears on her lips; she wears green lipstick— I think not coincidentally — while she and Rebecca are deliberately lying to Seymour, leading him on to think Enid cares about his blues .78’s so they can laugh at his expense later. When she is inspired by old punk music and seeking to try new identities, the green moves to her hair.

Rebecca: (disdainful) When did you do that?
Enid: What? How long have you been standing there?
Rebecca: Did you have to buy new hair dye or did you still have some left over from eighth grade?
Enid: Fuck you, bitch!

Enid: Hi… what’s your name?
Man: (looks at watchless wrist, then down the street) Norman.
Enid:…Are you waiting for a bus?
Man: Yes.
Enid: I hate to tell you this, but they cancelled this bus line two years ago. There are no buses on this street.
Man: You don’t know what you’re talking about.

The green hair and the identity with which Enid associates it has surprising side effects: for one thing, it makes her ballsier. She is able to admit she wants to see Josh, even though he isn’t home. She finally brings to an end (shown two caps above) Rebecca and her long-standing speculation about the man who waits for the bus. And she gets mouthier than normal (partly due to defensiveness) with people she usually settles for being subtly rude to.

John Ellis: Oh. Didn’t they tell you?
Enid: Tell me what?
John Ellis: Punk rock is over.
Enid: I know it’s over, asshole, I —
John Ellis: Yeah, if you really want to “fuck up the system,” you should go to business school. That’s what I’m gonna do. Get a job at some big corporation and fuck things up from the inside!

You can see the wheels turning for Enid during this exchange and she is reasoning through her attempt to adapt a punk identity; she doesn’t like all the flak she’s getting for it and she doesn’t want people to think she’s a blindly-anarchic bomb-tosser, either. (I think Enid is mainly far too socially scarred, which manifests itself as smug mistrust and smirking aloofness, by other people to “join” any kind of revolution, ever.)

Enid: That’s not even …
John Ellis: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Do you have my money?

(She wads up a twenty-dollar bill and throws it at him.)

John Ellis: Ooh, how “punk”.
Enid: That tape sucked, by the way.

Enid: It’s not like I’m some modern Punk dickhead… It’s obviously supposed to be a 1977 Punk look, but I guess Johnny Fuckface is too stupid to get it!
Rebecca: I didn’t get it either.
Enid: Everybody’s too stupid!

She dyes her hair back to black and continues trying to express herself (still having yet to realize in the bildungsroman tradition that she must find herself first, and expression will follow much more easily) through wardrobe, smart mouth, and hasty decisions.

That was fun. Maybe I’ll do red or blue later.

All the screencaps for Ghost World Half-Day will come from a combination of sources: heartstopper, augustusgloop, and vodiak on the LJ; Movie Screenshots on the blogger; various imdb caps and old, unsourced still shots. Also I might scan some pictures from the graphic novel since I am right now looking at the spine of it in a pile of books on my desk.

Graduation Speaker: High school is like the training wheels for the bicycle of real life. It is a time for young people to explore different fields of interest and to hopefully grow from their experiences.

After all, that which we learn from our mistakes can be as valuable as what we learn from our textbooks, and often we can turn the negative experiences that are common to all high-schoolers into positive steps toward personal growth and achievement.

Ghost World (Terry Zwigoff, 2001).

Graduation Speaker: In coming to terms with my own personal setback, which I’m sure you’ve all heard about, I’ve been able to learn a lot about myself. I’ve learned, for one thing, that I don’t need to rely on drugs and alcohol!

(Applause)

Enid: God, what a bunch of retards.

Rebecca: I thought Chipmunk Face was never going to shut up.

Enid: I know, I liked her better when she was an alcoholic crack addict! She gets in one car wreck and all of a sudden she’s Little Miss Perfect and everybody loves her.

Rebecca: It’s totally sickening.

Rebecca: This is so bad it’s almost good.

Enid: This is so bad it’s gone past good and back to bad again.

Melorra: Oh, my God, you guys! I can’t believe we made it!

Enid: Yeah, we graduated high school. How totally amazing.

It’s a great scene because the girls think they are very wise and sardonic and above-it-all, throwing out snappy one-liners and putting down the popular people at the school, and you realize that they may talk cool but they actually have a shitload of growing up to do. It gives their grimly satisfied bitchiness a certain dramatic irony and even a little pathos. I think all teenagers should be legally required to watch this film. I know I certainly should have.

All the screencaps for Ghost World Half-Day will come from a combination of sources: heartstopper, augustusgloop, and vodiak on the LJ; Movie Screenshots on the blogger; various imdb caps and old, unsourced still shots. Also I might scan some pictures from the graphic novel since I am right now looking at the spine of it in a pile of books on my desk.